Take Me Home
by ChasingPerfectionTomorrow
Summary: Six years after a tragic accident that leaves her father and brother dead, Sansa agrees to return home. Jon Snow, the boy she barely remembers, the man she's afraid to know, agrees to take her there on a cross country trip. But some things that are lost can never be found and some people will always be broken. Modern-AU.


**Summary: **Six years after a tragic accident that leaves her father and brother dead, Sansa agrees to return home. Jon Snow, the boy she barely remembers, the man she's afraid to know, agrees to take her there on a cross country trip. But some things that are lost can never be found and some people will always be broken.

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, huge surprise there, I'm sure. ;)

**A/N: **Plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone, we'll see how far it gets me.

* * *

**Chapter One**

Sansa eventually learns how to breathe again. The City is massive, huge, and within it she feels small and forgettable. Back home everyone knew her name, her face, her family, and her tragedy. In her small walk up apartment, high rises like jagged teeth over old brick buildings painted across wide windows, she is alone but free. After a life, removed and distant now like a child's nightmare, of being in the spotlight, of intrigue and games, she relishes the simplicity of her new found existence.

She works two jobs part time, one at the coffee shop just down the street and another across town at a women's shelter. The coffee shop, locally owned and simple, run by an aging Italian couple, provides her with conversation and laughter. The women's shelter gives her a sense of purpose, of paying it forward, of helping women to avoid three years in an abusive relationship like she did. Between the two jobs, and late nights by her bedroom window with a glass of wine in hand and soft music playing in the background blending with the sounds of a city that is ever alive, she finds a measure of happiness. But still, at night, alone in her bed, she dreams of home.

Of snow covered mountains, pine trees, smoking chimneys and her family wrapped around her. Of a family that no longer exists in a home burnt to ashes on a dark, lonely hill whose flames still haunt her by the scars left on her back and the terror of her nightmares. Sometimes she wakes screaming, alone in the darkness and she thinks of her father's warm steady hand, her older brother's easy laughter, and pretends they are there with her, easing her fears from another place, another life.

Her mother calls her weekly, but she has her hands full with her younger siblings, especially Arya, who hasn't been the same since the fire. None of them have, of course. They never speak of Dad or of Robb, their loss driving a dull knife between them until Sansa can hardly remember a time when they were close. Bran is nearly through high school and he sends her an email every few weeks and Sansa is filled with pride at her brother's perseverance and intelligence despite his terrible handicap. Another gift from the fire. Rickon, always sweet always soft spoken, speaks to her of simple, happy things, but she knows they all bear their scars and her baby brother is no different. The light has gone out of them all and Sansa has no hope of rekindling it. Arya… well, Arya is Arya and all of Sansa's attempts to reach out toward her little sister have been met with empty radio silence. Not that Sansa expects different, they were never close, and now it feels like it is too late.

She's just finished a late cover shift at the coffee shop on a Tuesday night when her phone rings. The dated cell phone vibrates on the kitchen counter top, threatening to buzz its way off the edge. Sansa makes a soft noise of alarm and brushes her flour covered hands hastily on her well worn apron. She's been making cookies for the women's shelter Bake Off. The number is her mother's and she frowns, her heart clenching involuntary in her chest. Her mother always calls on Sunday nights. Always.

"Mom?" she flips her phone open and tries not to sound concerned. This deviation from the norm has set her on edge. Sansa is always waiting for the bottom to fall out of everything. It always has.

"Sansa," her mother sounds tired, very tired, "I think, well, I think it's time we all went home."

Sansa froze and absently leans a hip against the counter. Her knees tremble slightly in shock. "Wh-what do you mean… go home?"

Her mother sighs heavily and Sansa can picture the weary purse of her lips and the furrows in her brow, "It's been six years… since, since the accident and we should visit, well, we should visit their graves and pay our respects to our friends in Winterfell." Her mother and the rest of Sansa's siblings live about eight hours north of her and Winterfell is another three days north of that.

"Mom," she says, her hand gripping the edge of the counter so hard it bites into her palm, "You know I don't have a car."

"Jon is coming through that way and he agreed to pick you up," her mother says simply, as if they were discussing the weather and Sansa's heart stutters for a variety of reasons, none of them particularly pleasant. She can feel the fragile glass of her existence cracking.

"Mom… are you sure this is a good idea? It's the middle of winter up there and-"

"Sansa," her mother's voice is stern, stern like it hasn't been in years. "We need to go back. Please, it's time we all stopped running away from what happened that night." Her voice beaks a little then and tears prick Sansa's eyes. "Especially me. I haven't been there for you like I should have been Sansa-"

"Mom-" Sansa starts to protest.

"Don't, just, don't. We've all lost our way, Sansa, and I think it's long past time we got back on track. Please Sansa, it's time we were a family again, at least for a few days." Her mother's voice is pleading, desperate almost, and she can hear the strain in her voice.

She draws in a shaky breath and speaks before she can consider the consequences, "Okay mom, I'll be there."

"Jon will pick you up Friday around noon, I've given him your address." She sounds relieved and that makes her agreement almost worth it.

"Alright," she says cautiously. When was the last time she saw Jon? Was the funeral truly the last time?

"And Sansa…?"

"Yeah Mom?"

"I love you."

Her throat clenches and she forgets how to breathe, her lungs collapsing in on her, "I-I love you too Mom."

She hangs up the phone and stares blankly at the carefully spaced chocolate chip cookies on the stove for a long, long while.

* * *

Friday comes faster than she might have hoped. The idea of going back, of seeing the burnt remains of her home, of looking into the empty, shallow eyes of her old friends, keeps her up at night. The burns across her back ache in remembrance and she spends the two days prior to Jon's arrival rehearsing all her excuses to stay. Work is no real help. Her boss at the coffee shop is beyond understanding, and the little old woman even impresses upon her how important she thinks the trip is for her.

"There's something lost about you dear Sansa," Beth tells her over a steaming mug of Sansa's favorite latte. "Your mother's right, it's time you found yourself again." She reaches out and places her, warm, wrinkled hand on Sansa's and she can't find the right words so she says nothing at all. Beth understands, she always does.

The women's shelter insists they will be fine without her for a week or two. They too have been encouraging, pushy even. Sansa wonders if she is as broken as the reflection she sees in all their eyes as they push her toward the one place she is most drawn to and most fears returning.

Jon arrives at noon on the dot. Even as a young boy and awkward teen, Jon Snow was punctual, she recalls. He knocks lightly at her door and Sansa cringes from her seat on her futon couch where she's sat for the past hour quietly hating herself. Despite her best intentions, she's packed a bag for herself and has put on her best pair of jeans and favorite coat. Feeling as though she is walking through one of her especially vivid dreams, she opens the door on her past to a familiar, yet different face.

Jon Snow had been her eldest brother's best friend since their earliest childhood. They'd grown up together and had been practically inseparable. He'd been a frequent staple at their dinner table, in their back yard, in their home, and even on family trips. A product of a broken home, Jon's father left him and his mother as a baby and his mother, always frail, died his senior year of high school. Sansa's mother had never quite approved of Jon, Sansa had thought it was because of his less than pristine upbringing –her main cause of disdain for him as she'd grown-, but as the years passed and Sansa reflected on her father and the years prior to his death, she understands better. Her father, Ned, had taken a very keen interest in Jon and his ailing mother, a beautiful waif of a woman if Sansa recalls. It was obvious from the start that Jon viewed Ned Stark as the father he'd never had, her family the one he had always longed for. As she unlatches the three neat little locks on her front door, she considers that Jon may have lost more than any of them.

The man at her door is barely the boy she remembers. The last time she'd seem him it had been through a veil of tears and a haze of grief, his face as cloudy and distant as the friends whose voices were suddenly too harsh and shrill. He is only an inch or two taller than she with the same, painfully, deep gray eyes set with thick brows. Long, curling hair pokes out from beneath a plain black knit hat that matches the tint of his faded jeans. A worn leather jacket sits across broad, hunched shoulders with a hint of a plain white tee poking out at the throat; simple and clean just like she remembers him. Thick framed glasses rested on an aquiline nose and he offers her a small, uneasy smile. The kind you might offer a stranger. Jon had always been quiet and slightly awkward but Sansa finds these qualities endearing rather than irritating in adult Jon.

"Hey," she says softly.

"Hey," he returns equally soft, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. There is a telling flush to his cheeks and he doesn't quite meet her eyes.

"Um, would you like to come in?" She waves a hand vaguely behind her at the cluttered simplicity of her apartment.

He looks past her and tugs his hat off, sending his hair into wild disarray. Sansa has the strangest urge to pat the strands into submission. The disorder gives him a rather boyish charm.

"Did you need help with your bags?" He asks as he strides inside. She shuts the apartment door and realizes she's never had a man here before. She's dated a bit, but nothing serious, nothing comfortable enough to allow within her quite, private spaces. Her life, her home, seems much smaller with him in it, his worn leather boots loud on the wood panels. Sansa is vaguely embarrassed by the overtly feminine feel of her living space and bustles over to him, trying not to appear anxious.

He reaches for her bag, sad and worn looking beside her small coffee table, and the anxiety and dread of the past few days returns in full force.

"Ah, listen Jon, I uh… I don't know if I should go. I mean with work and everything-"

He freezes and looks back her, half crouched to grab her bag, and she feels like a deer caught in headlights. She looks down at her feet before she can properly read his expression, afraid of what she might see there. She takes a few quick breaths and tries to gather herself. Over the years Sansa has learned how to conceal her feelings and emotions, but this sudden reminder of the past has thrown her completely off guard.

There is a long, punctuated silence and Sansa is alarmed, and a little angry, to find herself on the verge of tears. What happened to being strong? To being independent and collected? He takes a few steps toward her, the tips of his boots invading her view, before halting and she chances a look at his face. His eyes are pained and searching, but she marks a steely sort of strength in him. Teenage Jon had been kind, good and brave; she thinks, looking at him now, that maturity has made him even more so. He's good –it's written all over his faice- so obviously so that it almost hurts to look at him. Jon is suddenly an island unto himself, the last good man standing in her small, broken little world. But is a world where he doesn't belong, merely one he is passing through.

"Sansa… I, well we never really got a chance to talk, after the funeral," he sighs uncomfortably, carding a hand through his wild curls and looking distinctly out of his element. "And I just, I know they weren't really my brother, or my father, but you know, they were the only family I had and well, I-that makes you family too, you know?"

Sansa just stares, not at all sure what to say and he cringes a little when he looks at her, "What I'm trying to say, albeit really badly, is that I understand. If you don't want to go, I'm not going to make you." She can tell he means it, his inherent honesty is written all over his face. It always had been. Whenever he and Robb had gotten into any kind of trouble, Jon's face had always given them away. Sansa has very little trouble with lying; she's learned the value and use of lies over the years. But something about Jon makes it difficult to lie. Something deep within urges her toward honesty.

It is the memory of Jon and her brother more than anything else that tips her over the edge of indecision. "Can you do me one favor?"

He looks surprised and then kindly eager, "Yeah, sure, whatever you need Sansa."

She likes the way he says her name. Like they really are family, like he doesn't remember how indifferent she'd been to him when they were young.

"Will you drive slow?"

His answering smile is soft and steady. It teases at an emptiness inside her that has lain dormant for several long years. She can be brave, she tells herself as he grabs her bag and she locks up her tiny little life behind them. She can be brave like Jon, like Robb, like her father.

_Home._


End file.
